


Universes and Timelines

by jujubiest



Series: Barrison One-Shots [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst, Canon Compliant, Character musing, Gen, Multiverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 20:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5178206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s made a Barry Allen he cannot help but love, and that’s the cruel irony of time travel for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Universes and Timelines

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime during the back half of season one.

The many-worlds interpretation of the multiverse theory says that there is a universe for each possible decision and observation, an infinite number of universes in which every possibility plays itself out to conclusion.

Which means there is a universe in which Ronnie Raymond never became part of Firestorm, where he lives happily ever after with his wife, Caitlin Snow, where they name their first child Harrison, must to Dr. Wells’s pleased embarrassment.

And there’s one in which Cisco Ramon never has terrifying visions of the horrible things that will happen—are happening—to the people he loves. Where his smile never falters and his dreams never darken, where his sunny disposition and trusting nature are never tried and tested. Where his sense of wonder is never tinged with sadness, and regret.

There was once a universe where Nora Allen died of old age, with three generations of her family around her and a smile on her wrinkled face, drifting sweetly into peace at the end of a long life well-lived. That universe was murdered in its infancy, but there are others, very like it, the smallest differences. Universes where Barry Allen grows up happily, with both his parents, where Iris West is a childhood friend without the confusion mixed in with having her almost be a surrogate sister as well.

Universes where he becomes the Flash earlier, later, even a few where he never does at all. There are universes where Henry Allen was not convicted of his wife’s murder, and still got to raise his son, though their house was a lonely and quiet place. In those universes, sadness drains the light from Barry’s eyes early on and nothing seems able to draw it back again. No purpose drives Barry to study and learn and grow and fight, no goal…just a lingering pain over what he’s lost that curls him in on himself a little more every day.

There is even one universe where, all other things being equal, the man now known as Harrison Wells looks at Barry Allen one day and can no longer summon the ragged ghost of his hatred. When he looks around himself and no longer feels as though he’s living in a graveyard, surrounded by walking corpses. When he thinks, ever so briefly, of finding a way to go back again instead of forward, to stop himself from taking something from Barry that he knows can never be forgiven.

But at first, he can’t. Not because he’s cruel, but because he looks at Barry and he _loves_ him, feels a swell of pride he knows he has zero right to every time Barry proves once again just how different he is from the man Eobard Thawne learned to hate in some other future. This is not the same man. He will never _be_ that man. Eobard killed him after all, it seems, though not in the way he’d expected.

Inadvertently, he has destroyed the person he hated most and created another who wears his face, someone kind and genuine and innately trusting, someone naturally heroic who looks up to _him,_ as though he were the real hero somehow.

He’s made a Barry Allen he cannot help but love, and that’s the cruel irony of time travel for you. That’s why you shouldn’t mess with universes and timelines: because the natural order will punish you in ways you can’t imagine, give you things you never wanted to want and make you the reason you can never have them.

As Harrison Wells, he is trusted in this universe, is _loved,_ finds himself feeling almost like a second surrogate father to someone he’s supposed to despise. And he wants to keep it, but he knows he can’t. Because someday the truth will come out. And even if it doesn’t, he isn’t sure he could pass year after year watching Barry grow hard-eyed and hopeless, more and more like the man he once hated, as he fails again and again to find a way to free his father from an unjust imprisonment.

So the Harrison Wells of this unfortunate universe will go ahead with his original plan. He will allow his Barry to know the truth about him, to hate him, to hurt because of him. But in the end, if he can, he will give everything back to him. One way or another, he will remove the scars he has made on Barry Allen’s timeline, as many as possible…and erase the good man Dr. Wells from it in the end, to be replaced by his own abhorrent name.

He hopes Barry will find a way, someday, to separate the two in his mind. To hate the one and love the other. To imagine, as he now does, a universe where the natural order demands no sacrifice of them, where they all get to live happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> I just have a lot of conflicted Earth-1 Eobard!Wells feels, okay?


End file.
